Blog Journal #10

    This past assignment really pushed me to learn how to do new functions on Power Point, and I am very glad that our project had the specific requirements that it did, so I could learn how to put in navigation buttons, disable the linear navigation, and use triggers to set up our Jeopardy style presentation. I really liked setting up the board with all of the links to the questions. Seeing how I could make something that actually looked and functioned close to a real Jeopardy game made me feel really equipped for my future in teaching when it comes to creating interactive reviews or study tools. For next time, I would want to look more into inputing sounds like the ones that we saw in the example presentations. I would also want to change up the slides transitions that I used, instead of just using one throughout. Overall, I learned a lot, and feel more confident and comfortable with using Power Point in general.

    Reading through my classmates' blogs, I have gotten to look into their personal learning experience this semester and see what skills they grew, and what they struggled with. Firstly, I found it very encouraging to know that others are taking in new material and accomplishing novel tasks alongside me. Not everything can be talked about during our class discussions, so it is nice to get to really hear from each of my classmates through these blogs. Some of the interesting topics that have come up, are teacher productivity tools, in particular what kinds of tools we think we will need in our careers, manny of which are teaching or educated related. Another topic that cam up was opinions on the digital divide, discussing how Covid affected the digital divide and some possible solutions to mitigate the severity of the digital divide.  

    One technology-related skill that I would like to develop is learning to type 100 words a minute using the proper hand positioning and fingers to keys. As a teacher, you have to write a lot, whether emails, online paperwork, lesson plans, worksheets, etc., and I think that become a more proficient typer would help me to be more efficient in my job one day and while in school. I also chose this skill specifically because in first and second grade, I took typing as one of my electives, but never finished the course. I would like to be able to finish what I started back in elementary and then be apply it to school now and my career in the future. I plan on achieving this by completing typing games designed for teaching kids how to properly type. I think that this will be an effective route because it will be simplified instruction as it is geared towards children, and comes in short, packaged practice.